After spending about 45 minutes this morning trying to force my mesh sack filled with bourbon soaked oak chips into my carboy I am worried about a possible infection due to the handling and prolonged time. I hope I havent runined my 15% abv RIS! Anyone have any tips on better ways to go about this process. I only put them in a mesh sack in the first place because I didnt want to worry about getting little splinters in my beer. So frustrating.

I thought about doing that but the oak had only been sitting 2 days and it was time to transfer to secondary, I guess I didn't think it out enough. Kinda a bummer, I was expecting great things from this beer. Just keeping my fingers crossed and praying that I dont get an infection.

I'd use oak cubes instead of chips. You can soak them the same way and just throw them into the secondary with no problems with transfering later. Search other posts on this to determine how oaky you want to make it. They can go a long way if not careful.